


Three Lies the Seer Told Her

by starcunning (Vannevar)



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Dark Heresy - Freeform, Evangeline Khione, Gen, Inquisition, Sister of Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 22:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2084754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vannevar/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because you can see the future doesn't mean you always tell it true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Lies the Seer Told Her

> **"No one will be there."**

In her Master's nightstand she found the book. In the book she found the key. The key opened a locker, and in the locker she found a great number of weapons. The one her previous Master Markayus Baldwin wanted her to have was bound in leather and written in a spidery hand. Obeying his order, she took it, and she led the Blank and the Arbitrator into the Howling Halls, which well deserved the name. There was a pall of fear over the trio, hearing the wailing inside.

“Sister Evangeline,” said the Blank, “do you think the Emperor hears the prayers of the soulless?”  
She looked at him, his blond hair flecked with blood and ash, and swallowed the impulse to spit a denial. Instead she took his hand—his  _repulsive_  hand—and told him, “I will be glad to repeat them if you have any doubts.”  
Donovan bowed his head to recite the Prayer to the Throne, and Evangeline joined him, though her version was in High Gothic.

Then the Blank preceded her into the chamber and recoiled. It was a sparse, white room guarded by several servitors. They stood in a semicircle facing the far wall. In succession, each would fire a shot, and Evangeline had to push past him to see what they were shooting at.

It was a man, or had been a man once. He was pinned to the wall with witch-hunter's stakes, and his flesh was peppered with wounds, which knit even as they stood by, all of them dumbstruck.

Evangeline exhaled. She remembered Baldwin's letter, with its detailed instructions to retrieve the weapon and deliver her Master Melchior Amadeus, but she found all words had left her in the face of the only conclusion she could reach.

“Enrico Cezarez,” said the Blank, as he must. It didn't take much imagination to understand that had been the man's name, before.  
The thing he was now screamed. “What— Who—” it demanded in between shots, breathing ragged.  
A name rose to her lips— _Gerard Doucault_ —but she swallowed it.

If she spoke it aloud, her foe would surely be destroyed … and so would she. They all said nothing.

“Input parameters,” prompted one of the servitors. After a long pause, it continued: “Failure to comply will result in offensive action. Input parameters.”  
“Amadeus says continue current pattern,” Arbitrator Blackwell said, somehow.  
Evangeline looked down at the book in her hands. She turned its pages. An innumerable amount of glyphs and seals covered its leaves. A few notes in High Gothic cluttered the margins, and she was able to derive the occasional reference to the Ordo Malleus. A crimson ribbon was sewn into its spine, and she turned to the bookmark.

> _Melchior,_  read the text,
> 
> _Before you proceed, know this—destroying this creature will not restore Cezarez to you; he has gone already to the Emperor's side when his soul was displaced. Better it be bound here than free to work its ruin from the Warp. You know this as well as I; all softness has gone from us. Markayus has yet to learn this, and you will need to enlighten him. Proceed with caution._
> 
> _Jericho de Riv, OM_

The Blank was at her shoulder, reading. “We can destroy it,” he said, and she nodded.  
“No,” it howled. “No, you can't!”  
“Let's go,” she said tersely.  
“Shouldn't we—” Uriah began.  
“We'll need to prepare. And there are answers I need first,” she said, and they left the daemonhost keening behind them.

Inquisitor Markayus Baldwin had translated in-system while her team was under deep cover, investigating a colony under the purview of the rogue Inquisitor Doucault. He had agreed to join them after the suspicious disappearance of Inquisitor Amadeus, under whom he had served as Interrogator, and whom Evie called her Master. If he lived, he had sheltered a daemonhost. That made him a Radical. If Baldwin was innocent of all knowledge of his Master's crimes, Evangeline would swear herself to his rosette to preserve the legitimacy of her team. She prayed he was true.

She withdrew through Amadeus' personal chambers to his study, and pressed the activation rune to wake his cogitator. To verify her access, it took a strand of her platinum-blonde hair, and then presented her with a menu of options. She engaged the long-range voxsponder, and awaited a connection.

Evangeline took stock of the situation, locking the servos of her power armor as a wave of exhaustion crashed down upon her. They had had to fight their way to Amadeus' chambers, through the fire-team dispatched to hold the ship on Doucault's orders, on accusations of heresy that were looking less spurious by the moment. It had been taxing. She knew Uriah, the Arbitrator, was only on his feet thanks to a battery of stimulants, and she wasn't much better off. While banishing a daemon was not something she felt inclined to  _just leave til morning,_  the fact remained that their exhausted, agitated minds were not prepared for the precision involved. In fact, she'd forgotten something very important.  
"Remove your limiter," she told the Blank. "I don't need any chance of that thing listening in while we prepare."  
He nodded and did as she asked. It was another unpleasantness piled on top of multitudinous injuries and a dozen conflicting concerns.

“This is Inquisitor Markayus Matheo Baldwin, Ordo Hereticus Lentulus, reading you clear and true,” crackled the box, and for an instant Evangeline forgot all about her broken ribs.  
“This is Evangeline Khione, attached to the Ordo Hereticus Lentulus, acting command aboard the  _Charnel Hound,_ ” she replied.  
“What of Amadeus?” her old Master asked, genuine concern in his voice.  
Evangeline closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, ignoring as best she was able the lance of pain that the motion sent through her.  _Detach,_  she told herself,  _detach._  “That is a secondary concern,” she said, her tone colder than she'd meant.  
“How can the fate of your Master and mine be any sort of ‘secondary concern’?” he demanded. Evangeline had never heard him so much as impatient before but his tone was furious. She did not allow herself to flinch from it.  
“Because his death may be the very duty of your office,” Evangeline said, her choler rising. “You sent me to retrieve a weapon, Inquisitor.” She would not revoke that title, even in her speech, til she was sure. “What did you know of the things I would find?”

There was a long, long pause. In a moment of charity, the Seraphim wanted to put it down to a poor vox link. But the silence made his answer, when it came, redundant.

“Yes,” he said, no strength in his voice. “If you are asking whether I knew what my master kept, the briefest answer is yes. He was a comrade once—”  
“Radical!” she accused, not quietly, though her ragged voice only rose as she continued. “Rogue and  _heretic!_ ”

There was a surge of displeasure that coursed from her wrists to shoulders, locking them tight with tension as Donovan’s hands closed on her arms, and though her voice was quieter as she continued it was no less furious. “You know that I am duty-bound to destroy it, and then destroy  _you,_ ” she told him.  
“I wish you would destroy it!” Baldwin cut in, and the surprise undercut her, left her with her mouth hanging open. “I was not there when it was made and I wish with all my soul it had not been. I  _loved_  that man, and I did not do this, did not want to see it done. I was only an interrogator—”  
“I am not even that, but I  _will_  destroy it.”  
“You are not seeing this clearly, Evangeline,” he said, pleading.  
“I am the only one who is seeing this clearly!” she screamed back at him. “He was your comrade, I understand that, and you do not wish to think he is truly dead—”  
“I did not wish this upon him either.”  
“But you did,” Evangeline said then, shaking off the Blank’s grasp and the sympathy born of her long service. “You were party to this and you have made us party to damnation.”  
“Is it damnation to hold a daemon bound?” he asked her then, his voice gaining ferocity.  
“You’re the one who filled my head with the writings of Gideon Ravenor,” she accused, teeth set, “so you know that it  _is_.”  
“Listen to me, Evangeline. To hold it bound, outside the Warp, where it can do nothing? Not to use—”  
“You cannot keep a daemonhost under the expectation you will never use it!” she frothed in reply. “Ravenor, again! And you  _did_  send me here to use it, Markayus—“  
“No,” he pled. “No, I never wanted—“

With a swift, angry swipe of her hand she produced the astropathic communiqué he’d sent under his own seal: “‘You will be inside, equipped to use the weapon, and free of interference. Do what you must. My master has too much to accomplish to allow him to pass. No cost is too great,’” she read, quaking with anger and exhaustion. “From your lips to my ears, Markayus: you sent me here to loose a daemon on my foe, and for that there will be a reckoning.”  
“I can see this is abhorrent to you,” he said softly. “Destroy it, then. You have the capability.”  
“Yes, you gave me that,” she agreed coldly.  
“I wish you would use it and give my friend peace. After he was possessed, Inquisitor de Riv bound the daemon fast in his flesh and secured it as you have seen.”

_Your peers have lied to you,_  she wanted to tell him, because there was hate in her heart as much as there had ever been love, and she had loved her old Master a great deal. She wanted to tell him that his friend’s suffering would never be ended, that the howling thing had consumed his comrade’s soul. Because she was angry, but also because it was true. She said nothing a long while.

“You told me no one would be in that sanctum,” she said instead, more quietly than she’d said anything since the beginning of the conversation.  
“The daemon has given us no other name but No One.”  
“I trusted you,” she snarled. “In spite of what you are,  _witch,_  I trusted you. I served your ends; I salved your wounds. I would have given my life for you, gladly. You promised me a weapon to destroy Gerard Doucault, and you gave me  _this_.”  
“It is all you have,” he told her. “With your master missing and under carta you will find it difficult to secure other resources. I can help you, when I arrive in two standard weeks.”  
“You will aid me in destroying the heretic Doucault,” she demanded. “And the heretic Amadeus. And, if he lives, the heretic de Riv. And then,” she said, trailing off, finding herself unable to pronounce judgment on him.  
“I will remit myself to the Ordos,” he swore.  
“ _I_  will submit my evidence to the Ordos myself,” she said, quiet and cold. “Your words have proven false too often before.”

Evangeline cut the transmission a moment later, leaning on the locked servos of her power armor momentarily to keep her upright. She took a silent mental inventory: she had the book, she had Baldwin’s letter, she almost certainly had a pictcaster to illustrate the daemon’s keeping was accessible only from Amadeus’ personal chambers; she had the voxsponder logs of this conversation. She could have facsimiles created of the book and the letter in case the daemon’s destruction consumed them, and prepare a transmission contingent upon termination of life-signs from her power armor or a prepared code. It would not do for her duty to die with her. A moment later she could move under her own power once more.

She looked at her exhausted comrades, all of them battered and begging for rest.  
Evangeline said, “We have work to do, so let us be about it.”

— — — — —

> **"He is innocent."**

The stab lights overhead cast shadows from their brows, leaving eyes inscrutable. Evangeline took this as a kindness, as she was sure there was nothing to like in their gazes. Donovan Valance and Uriah Blackwell looked upon her as though examining a specimen.  
“There’s been word,” she said at last. “From the Astropathica.” Her hands were folded on the table before her, and she glanced down at the wax-sealed transcript that was laid between the trio. “Inquisitor Baldwin has answered my missive.”

They both said nothing a long time, and she could feel their doubt in the air. She did not fault them for it, and she was grateful—more than grateful—that they had demurred thus far. They could have gone to Amadeus.  
They could have told her Master that Evangeline Khione was spouting all sorts of accusations: that he had suffered too long the witch Carter Othren, a sanctioned but uncontrolled and uncontrollable psyker. That Inquisitor Amadeus continued Othren’s access to knowledge that was too dangerous for Othren to have.  
He had, after all, allowed for the escape of a multitude of people exposed to the Empyrean and the machinations of the Ruinous Powers. They—and they had been four at the time—had spent weeks clearing up the cells that bloomed like mold after that breach of perimeter.

And when the local Remembrancers had questioned them on the disappearances, tried to paint their actions not as an Inquisition-sanctioned cleansing but a pogrom performed under the auspices of the Ecclesiarchy, as they had been posing, Carter Othren had given the reporter a seizure. On film.  
And Melchior Amadeus had marked this dangerous witch a likely candidate for his next Interrogator.

Bad judgment was not heresy; Evangeline knew that. But Othren impugned the holy name of Him-on-Earth and Amadeus defended him. He complicated the work of the Inquisition and Amadeus tolerated him. He proved erratic and dangerous and Amadeus bolstered his power.

After collaborating to quash a market dealing in Warp-touched artifacts, the quartet briefly submitted themselves to the command of one of Amadeus’ brethren, one Inquisitor Gerard Doucault. Doucault had warned them, quietly, that certain of Amadeus’ practices in the past had been seen as skirting the bounds of radicalism.

Evangeline’s mind had proven a fertile ground for the seeds of suspicion to grow. She had shared her concerns with the Blank Valance, and with Arbitrator Uriah Blackwell. Uriah had threatened to report her to their Master right away, and she respected his dedication to the strictures of command. Rather than draft a carta, Evangeline had pled for an extension, to contact another Inquisitor who could investigate, quietly.

Inquisitor Markayus Baldwin had been Amadeus’ student once, before his elevation. He had also been Evangeline’s Master, and she considered him a trusted friend. She owed him her life, but she knew that in the most dire circumstances, he would aid her as best he could. So she had asked for his assessment, with all his resources.

And now his reply had come, and she had brought it to the Blank and the Arbitrator unread, so that there would be no suspicion of conspiracy. Carter Othren was not part of this quorum. Evangeline did not trust him.

Uriah reached across the table for the letter, and broke the seal, dark fingers unfolding the creamy paper.  
“‘To Sister Evangeline Khione, Kaurav City, Kaurava Primaris,’ et cetera et cetera,” he read in his Metallican accent, “‘from Inquisitor Markayus Baldwin, Ordo Hereticus Lentulus, origin path unknown,’ et cetera et cetera,” he said. “‘Thank you for your well-wishes; my recovery proceeds apace,’ et cetera et cetera,” he continued, continuing to skim. He glanced over the edge of the paper at Evangeline. “How long did you serve with him?” he asked, as though the pleasantries baffled him.  
Evangeline cleared her throat. “Six … six years,” she said, “counting a year where I was disbarred from combat. I was part of his medicae staff.”  
They both furrowed their brows at her. “I knew you did field triage,” the Blank said. “You weren’t a Seraphim originally?”  
Evie shook her head. “Not before this assigment. Front lines, specifically. No noncombat postings. Please,” she said to Uriah, “continue.”  
He cleared his throat and nodded, the bright lights reflecting off his shaven head. “‘As to the matter of your inquiry, you must understand I have limited resources from my current posting, but what I did have was sufficient for a thorough examination of archives and records. I was able to request all document and Novena transcripts relevant to your Inquiry and reviewed them without bias. I can say to you with absolute certainty that to my knowledge of his past and his future, Melchior Corax Amadeus is innocent of the accusations of heresy you have levied.’”

Uriah let the paper fall from his hands, and she felt two pairs of eyes upon her, anticipating her reaction. They had respected her command ’til now. She doubted that would continue, but she spoke anyway.  
“Mister Valance, you may carry that letter, please,” she told the Blank, and then unfolded her hands, offering her wrists to Blackwell. “I don’t want him touching me,” she said to the Arbitrator as though in explanation. “I have no intention of resisting. Take me to Inquisitor Amadeus.”  
Uriah cuffed her, and they went.

— — — — —

> **"I promise you …"**

The office smelled of oak and leather and the faint vanilla scent of aging paper. Evangeline thought it was the most comforting scent in the world—maybe second to the crisp scent of the air after a fresh snowfall, but she would probably never get to see a Transborean winter again. Markayus Baldwin’s study was surprisingly cozy, the man himself settled into a large, well-stuffed chair. The intravenous drip had been tucked away behind the chair’s high back, as though out of sight was out of mind, but she was part of his medicae staff. His injury was  _never_  out of mind.  
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Evangeline said, bowing low, her braid of white-blonde hair falling forward over her shoulder. He looked up at her, closing his book, and smiled as though he was happy to see her.  
“Yes, Evangeline,” he said.  
“If you’re uncomfortable, we can adjust your medication,” she said, beginning to move in anticipation of his instructions.  
“No,” he said. He was old, much older than he looked, but he’d never quite lost the accent of his homeworld. It was almost soothing. Inquisitor Baldwin looked at her with his tawny eyes as she wrung her hands before her. “Come, sit,” he said gently, indicating a chair opposite.  
The Sororita bowed, and lowered herself delicately into the seat. By instinct her hands went to her belly, but that impulse was unnecessary now.  
“How was your postpartum examination?” he asked quietly as he observed the gesture.  
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Well … everything checked out normal,” she began. “They found a wet nurse for Etain already, so Sister Lucia was able to prescribe me a regimen that will speed my recovery without … without having to worry about if…” the girl trailed off, bowing her head as though embarrassed by her halting, stammering speech. If she was being honest with herself, it was so that the Inquisitor wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

“I suppose what I should be asking is ‘how are you?’ Baldwin amended. She saw him smile, his teeth preternaturally bright against his dark skin, but she couldn’t return the gesture.  
Evangeline only shook her head. “Excommunicated,” she said then. “Denied the companionship of my sisters and bereft of my daughter.”  
“You must know that Sisters Famula will take complete care of her,” Baldwin said softly. Evangeline grimaced. “Inquisitor Adrian Ghislaine has agreed to attempt to corroborate your story, but you know as well as I that Torin Firemane—”  
“Isn’t with the Deathwatch any longer,” she said. “I remember.” Then she looked chagrined at interrupting.  
“Sister,” he began, then amended, “Evangeline. I am very sorry for what I must tell you, but I thought it best I do so myself, face-to-face, and in private.”  
“What is it?” she said, voice trembling.  
“You know I am not able to conduct field work until I am recovered,” he said, “and that I will have to divest myself of much of my staff for a time. Your sisters will be returning to their convent.”  
“To Terra?” she said softly. “I cannot go to the Convent Prioris; they won’t have me.”  
“I know,” he said in a low voice. “Your actions occurred while you were under my authority and my judgment holds sway, but I cannot keep you here forever.”  
“Yes you could,” she said quickly. “I could be your personal medicae and tend to your recovery, I could—”

“Evangeline, no,” he said, and for a moment she felt cold. Had she not lost enough? “I have protected you as best I can, but the Argent Shroud is a militant order, and they have demanded a militant posting.”  
She gazed at him. “They’re hoping I’ll die,” she said softly, “and everyone will forget about … about what I did.”  
His smile was rueful. “Most probably. I do not think either of us wish to indulge them. You have been part of my staff for half a decade, and your service is valuable to me. But I have arranged for you to transfer to the  _Charnel Hound_.”  
“The …  _Charnel Hound_?” she repeated. It sounded like a Flesh Tearers vessel to her.  
“My old master, Melchior Corax Amadeus, agreed to take you on,” he said. “He is going to the Kaurava system.”

The Sister, always pale, blanched further. “No,” she breathed.

“Yes,” he said, gently. “To repair the Ecclesiarchy’s good name.”  
“No,” she protested again, without strength, and her tears got the better of her. She had been unsure of Baldwin at best when she had come to his ship, but he was a good and decent man despite the impossible pressures of his office.

Evangeline would miss him desperately.

He rose from his chair, briefly disengaging the tubing from his IV port as the blanket tumbled from his legs, and crossed to rest a hand upon her shoulder.  
“I promise you,” the diviner said. “It will all be alright.”


End file.
